


our memories are like a city

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha-centric, POV Natasha Romanov, Post-Avengers (2012), Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2152743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They train you to learn things like this: you are only broken while you feel broken, until someone comes along that can stop you from coming apart and help put you back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our memories are like a city

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetwatersong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/gifts).



> Inspired by the following from the _be_compromised_ prompathon: 
> 
> T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.  
> And Grace, my fears relieved.  
> How precious did that Grace appear  
> The hour I first believed.
> 
> Through many dangers, toils and snares  
> I have already come;  
> 'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far  
> and Grace will lead me home.
> 
>  
> 
> With thanks to [bobsessive](http://bobsessive.tumblr.com) for beta. Title from Tom Pollock's ["The City's Son"](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/18364451-the-city-s-son).

It starts when I miss the rendezvous point.

It starts before that, really, but I refuse to acknowledge three weeks and two months, refuse to acknowledge that someone has managed to track me, watch me, observe me.

The fact that you have not been able to subdue me earlier, that was your mistake. The rendezvous point, that was my mistake. I was supposed to be there five seconds before, but I got foolishly hung up on making sure my foot didn’t catch on the uneven cobblestones that paved the path I was running along.

Stupid, really. _Stupid_.

They would kill me for that, for daring to take care of my well-being over my mission, and now I am paying for it because those five seconds cost me my freedom, cost me your bow at my throat and at least six men in tactical suits pointing guns at my head.

I did not fight. I should have. I could have. There are things in that lifetime that I do and do not remember, some memories that shine brighter than others when I try to piece together what is real (you) what is not (them) and what might be (me). This one is a bright recollection, a world of color against those that are mostly black and grey. I had a knife hidden in my belt and a garrote hidden up my sleeve and there was a vein in your throat, one that stood out in the dark more starkly than the rest. I fixated on it, watched the blood pulsate through your skin, like the _beat beat beat_ of my heart hammering against my chest in the long minutes that followed my initial capture.

They train us to learn things like this: sever the carotid artery the right way, and it takes less than five minutes for someone to bleed out. Do it quickly, and it could take less than one minute. I have perfected the one-minute kill, and you and your men could have been dead before you even realized I had pierced your skin.

But I did not fight. I did not cut your veins. Instead, I let you live, and I let myself be led into a van where I was sure you were going to drug me, kill me, torture me. You cuffed me, but did none of that, and then spoke words I did not understand, even though American is not as foreign on my tongue as you would probably like to believe.

_It’s okay. You’re safe, now._

I am physically broken when you bring me in. I have bones that rattle around in my arm, I’m bleeding in places that I know you can’t see, and I have a palette of bruises along my stomach, the colors of which match the brilliant sunset that is happening in back of me. You lead me into a room that is grey-walled and bare, but it is at least nicer than the chamber they have kept me in at the Red Room. You give me water that is not dirty, that I do not have to drink from a bowl, and you give me food that is fresh, that I do not have to pick the mold or the bugs off of before ingesting.

“It is poison,” I tell you coldly and you laugh, and I feel indignant at your response, because I am a killer and you cannot just _laugh_.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Those days, honestly, they pass in a blur that sometimes seems like a hallucination, a time when I wasn’t made to fight for my freedom or for my food, when I was handled with caution and perhaps what others might consider to be a bit rough – but compared to my previous life, it was as if someone had wrapped me in a blanket and was treating me with all the gentleness in the world.

“I like your hands.”

I remember telling that to you one day when I am falling asleep and when it is you who has been stationed at my bedside to make sure I don’t snap or go crazy when I wake up. I have always liked your hands, from the first time I saw you string an arrow to the fiftieth time I watched you flex your fingers around your bow. You place your palm on my cheek and it is soft and it is coarse at the same time, an electrifying jolt against my bruised skin, and I almost feel like there is a reason I am actually alive.

At night I dream of the sea, of its rolling white surf and warm sand. I dream of being engulfed by it the way I was often engulfed by the screams and the torture and the pain until I passed out. I dream that I’m a mermaid, a sailor, a pirate, I dream that I own the waters the way men once claimed they owned me.

But I was never at sea, the same way that I was never a ballerina, that I never owned anything, that I was never anything or anyone except (maybe) Natalia.

 

***

 

They whisper about you in the halls.

They whisper about me, too, but I’m used to it and I don’t care. You say you don’t, but I can tell that you do, and I can tell that whatever you have dealt with since bringing me in is weighing on you more than you would ever say.

I am not used to guilt. I am not used to causing it, nor feeling it, but when it comes to you, things are different and I don’t know why. So I do not tell you about the things that I am sure you already know, I ignore them and you ignore them and somehow, we survive.

They start sending me on missions. Small ones at first, simple things that given my history I would laugh at: gang heists, drug busts. I know exactly what they are doing, even before you sit me down and explain that they are gauging my trust, that they are seeing if I am really as redeemable as you have claimed me to be. They will not risk innocent blood on your behalf or on mine, though I do think at times they want to kill me, would not mind putting a bullet into the back of my skull.

“Do you trust me?”

I finally ask the question one day when we’re about ten miles out of our safe house location, and the dust kicking up from the truck that we’re hitching a ride on is making it hard to breathe.

“Yes,” you respond almost instantly. There’s nothing more, but I don’t need more – at least, not right now – and so I file it away in the space of my memory that I have reserved for all the real things that I am learning in this new world.

The missions go well. They learn that we have a rapport that even I don’t understand, but then, I don’t bother to. I have never bothered to. They send us out together because apparently we are better as two rather than as one, even when we are yelling and bantering and bullshitting with each other so much that I think we are going to get yelled at for being unprofessional in the eyes of all these people who practically bow to authority. But the assignments get bigger and the responsibility gets greater and my uniform starts to fit more securely, as if I am actually becoming the person inside of it, rather than feeling like I am crawling out of my skin.

Rather than feeling like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not, someone in costume being paraded around for show.

At first we’re Fury’s pets, and then we’re Barton and Romanov, and then, eventually, we’re Strike Team: Delta.

“Delta,” you say when we leave the briefing, and our pairing is about as official as marriage papers drawn up in a courthouse. “I like it.”

I don’t answer right away, because I am still learning how much of myself I want to give – but I like it, too.

 

***

 

Here’s something I can tell you now: I was scared, I was shaking, I was alone. If the Hulk had succeeded and if I had died at that moment in a dark corner of the underbelly of the Helicarrier, no one noticing that I had gone missing at all, I do not think that I would not have been so upset about losing my own life – because it was not my mortality that I cared about.

I shy away from the fight uncharacteristically until I get the message, and it cuts through me the same way it did when I was tied to a chair in Russia, when my only goal at the time was to extract information without getting killed.

_It’s Barton. He took out our systems. He’s headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?_

I copy.

You shoot, you slash, you kick. You do everything that I’ve seen you do in combat a thousand times over, only this time, it is me on the other end of the fight, a fight we’ve had before but one that has never put so much at stake. We have fought to hurt but we have never fought to kill, we have fought with anger but we have never fought with hate. Eventually, I get the upper hand, biting into your arm and knocking your head into the metal rail. I swallow down the wince in my throat as I hear the impact of your skull against the bar, and for a moment, I’m worried that I’ve misjudged my actions.

But then you look at me and there’s something in your eyes that’s less Loki and more Clint, and there’s recognition, and there’s a flicker of something resembling emotion as you stare at my face.

“Tasha?”

I’ve haven’t seen you in six months, and your first words could not have been more beautiful.

 

***

 

After I knock you out, I relay to Fury that you’ve been neutralized.

“Neutralized, or taken care of?”

I don’t have to specify because I think we both know that if it were the latter, my tone would not have been quite so curt. There are agents who want to take you away, who want me to go back to the fight, but I refuse. They should know better, that I don’t leave your side that easily.

Fury comes over my comm again and tells me about Coulson, and I am not lying to say that I don’t feel something, because it’s Coulson, and because of course I do. But the truth is, I don’t give a flying fuck about the battle, or about Loki or Stark or Banner. The truth is, my mission is the same as it was when Coulson called me in Russia, when Fury ordered me to go to Kolkata, when Hill dispatched me to meet Banner and Rogers on the bridge of the Helicarrier.

I direct the agents carrying you to one of the empty infirmary rooms. I watch as they help situate you on the bed and then I strap your wrists down, pulling the buckles tight over your skin. My eyes and my heart burn with anger and with pain and I know you’re going to hate me when you wake up, but I don’t care, because it’s for your own good.

They train us to learn things like this: use enough force and you can make someone’s brain bleed. Use just a hint of force less, and you can incapacitate them for a prolonged period of time without doing irreparable damage. I take advantage of the reprieve to cry, for myself and for you, for everything I already know we’ve lost and everything I know you’ll have to fight to get back. I don’t cry, except I do, when I need to, when it matters.

You matter.

You open your eyes. There’s blue but there’s also green, and there’s Loki but there’s also Clint, and _please come back to me, Clint, please come back, please please please come back._

You do, finally, and I’m thankful that I’ve already had my time to grieve privately because I can tell that you need someone to be detached right now, to be strong, to be the one half of what we have become together. You wake up and ask me about debts and brainwashing and I am _tired_ , I am so tired, and I just want to tell you not now, please not now.

_I’ve been compromised. I’ve got red in my ledger…I’d like to wipe it out._

The truth is, I’ve never been able to hide anything from you. The truth is, there is so much more I want to tell you that you deserve to know.

But we have a war to fight and a world to save, and so I put it off, and then I forget.

 

***

 

They train us to learn things like this: there is no truth in a lie, the same way there is no glory in sacrifice. Die for yourself, that is considered stupid. Die for your country?

That is considered acceptable.

 

***

 

After I close the portal, after Rogers confirms we’re all alive, I hurry through the desecrated streets and still-burning buildings, working my way through ruins and rubble until I can see you coming into view. You’re walking slowly and clearly trying to hide the pain your body is conveying, and it takes everything inside of me not to do one of those stupid “running leap into your arms” moves that we always make fun of when we watch old movies together on your couch.

“I need to look at you,” I say as I brush broken glass off your bare arm, trying not to think about the way that it’s probably already embedded itself into the deep cuts I can see along your skin.

“Later,” you say, as you find my eyes. “I’m okay. I need to look at you.”

“Later,” I say, moving your hand away from the gash on my forehead as we both walk back towards Stark Tower. “I’m okay.”

There’s blood on my face and bones that are hurting in my ankle and you’re not okay and neither am I, but we’re both too tired to argue about it and I’d rather just get this whole thing done and over with while I still have the energy to stand up straight.

Detaining Loki is easy enough - without his Chitauri army and without his scepter, he’s little more than a beat-up kid who just got his ass kicked by a bunch of bullies. But then Stark is practically forcing people to join him for schwarma, and I have no choice but to participate, even though it’s the last thing in the world I want to do.

I barely taste the food I’m eating, my eyes intensely trained on you, the way I can tell you’re trying to stay alert. Your leg is propped up on my chair and your body is hunched over in an attempt to lessen the pain of your injuries, and you look so unbelievably exhausted…and I don’t know if it’s from Loki or from the fight or something else entirely, but it scares me in a way that I don’t remember ever experiencing.

I leave as soon as I’m done, pulling you up along with me. _We’ll see everyone later_ , I announce, because I know that Fury’s not done with us but right now I need to be alone with you and I can’t wait any longer. It’s one of the few times I am glad that you haven’t given up your shitty Brooklyn apartment, and as I dispatch a S.H.I.E.L.D. car to pick us up outside the perimeter of the ruined parts of the city, holding you upright to keep you steady, I realize that this is the first time I’ve been able to put my arms around you in nearly half a year.

It’s almost enough to make me cry. Again.

I take you home and clean you up, force you to stay awake while I pick the glass out of your skin, washing your injuries as best I can, sewing your wounds shut with an old first aid kit. It hurts, and I can tell, but I talk you through it because really, it’s no worse than any other mission where we’ve had to patch ourselves up afterwards, no worse than the times we have been left bleeding or fragmented, pushed to the point of no return.

It’s such a good lie, I almost believe it myself.

 

***

 

It takes a month after everything for you to ask the question that I’m surprised you haven’t asked sooner.

“Why did Loki take me?”

I debate not answering, because how much easier would it be for both of us to sweep this under the rug? But I know I can’t do that, that it’s not how you start to heal, that the only way you can move forward is by accepting what is holding you back.

“He wanted your mind,” I say finally. “You were smart and you had skills, and you knew all of our secrets.”

“And I told them all,” you say. I can see the guilt settling into your eyes even before you even finish talking, and I sigh.

“Stop. Just stop, okay?” I feel my throat tighten. “Even if you – if you didn’t. I’m not blaming you for what he did. I’m not _letting_ you blame you for what he did. If you didn’t tell him, he would’ve found another way to get to me, or to us.”

You nod, but I can tell you don’t believe me and it hurts, this chasm that has been opened between us, this crack in our foundation that’s been broken by monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for.

 

***

 

They train us to learn things like this: nothing is sacred and nothing is actually real. There are masks behind masks behind masks, each one more layered than the other, and if you are smart, if you can figure out how to look past them, then maybe – just maybe - you can survive.

Maybe.

 

***

 

After another month, we start sleeping together again.

It’s tentative and it’s nowhere near the level of comfort that we’re used to, it’s not like we’re sliding into the same old routine because nothing is the same anymore. We’re both more fragile now, like we’ve aged fifty years, like we’ve gone from spry kids who didn’t give a damn about sexual safety to elderly adults who move slowly, more deliberately, who are constantly scared of breaking each other. My mind is too active, I spend not enough time enjoying your mouth on my body and too much time worrying about if your brain will hold out. You don’t touch me the way I have come to recognize, you are more cautious about the way you handle certain parts of me, and when you accidentally slip I understand why.

I leave the bed not because I’m afraid, but because you are in a place where I know you need and want to be alone. We’ve established that, at least, understanding when to give each other distance in the wake of our own healing, and I think it helps that you know by now I will never really be far: a few paces away in the living room or the bathroom or the kitchen, ready to return at a moment’s notice when we both are ready to come back to each other.

When we do reconvene, I find you standing by the window. I am not surprised, and I know you don’t expect me to be.

“What are you doing?” I ask softly, even though the question is a game, one that we play all the time and one that I know the rules of by heart. You shake your head.

“Just thinking.”

“You can do that in bed,” I point out, and I wait and I wait and I wait because god, I told you I’d wait, I told you and I am trying my best to make you believe me.

You shake your head again and I want to ask why, but I already know the answer. You think you’ll hurt me, you think that you’ll make me angry, you think that you’ll make me run away. I want to laugh at your thoughts and tell you that I understand this better than anyone, that it takes more than your hands around your throat to damage me.

But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I put my arms around you and let you feel the way I trust you, the way my body trusts you, and we stand there until night shifts into morning, until the shadows on the wall don’t seem quite so evil anymore.

 

***

 

They train us to learn things like this: you can never have love, but if you do, then love will never be anything other than bruises and gashes and blood. You will never remember it, and that is why it will never be true in the way that it was before you became unmade in the first place.

If you can even remember when that time existed.

 

***

 

Three months after, I find you at the range.

I am surprised, to say the least. You have been given clearance to return to active duty, but I did not expect you to go immediately to the place that I thought you would avoid. I should know better. I should know that of course you’re going to go back to the one thing that feels comfortable, to prove to yourself that you can work past whatever is crippling your mind.

I watch from the observation window, but I don’t let you know that I’m there. Not that I need to. You’re aware of my presence and that’s all I care about, and we both know that if you really didn’t want me here you would tell me to go away. The glass provides a physical barrier in which I can keep my metaphorical distance and I watch you release your arrows, each one falling short of their target in a way that is unsettling. I can see the muscles in your shoulder tense in frustration, and I can tell it’s taking everything you have not to break down.

It’s then that I decide to enter, walking into the space where you’ve set up shop. I stop next to you as you release another arrow, which lands somewhere on the floor, and when I look closer, I realize that your hands are shaking.

“I can’t shoot,” you say, and it’s the most frustrated I’ve seen you in a long time, more so than when you came home from your first day of therapy, and when you found out Fury put you on desk duty. I step forward, putting my hands on top of yours, and keep my voice soft.

“Try now.”

I leave my palms resting on your skin as you raise your bow. I can see your fingers, normally so steady, still trembling on the bowstring, and so I move a little closer, anchoring your body against mine.

“You are Clint Barton, the greatest assassin the world has ever seen.” This is what I tell you, and for a little while, at least, I can pretend that despite the cameras and the open space and the agents walking past that it is just us, that we are the last two people left on earth, the only ones that matter.

“You are good at what you do. You are stronger than anyone would give you credit for. I trust you with my life, because you saved me, and because you believed in me.”

(They train you to learn things like this: you are only broken while you feel broken, until someone comes along that can stop you from coming apart and help put you back together.)

The arrow that you’re holding zings forward, lands just a hair outside of its target, and for the first time in what feels like years, I smile.

It’s not perfect ( _we_ are not perfect), but it’s a start.


End file.
